


burn it back (something newer coming through)

by tallykale



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 12:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19150990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tallykale/pseuds/tallykale
Summary: Maybe that haunted hollow-eyed version of Calliope had been right when she’d talked about the nature of Space; how it needs to fall back, remain dormant and passive and empty and silent until the right moment, and that even then its final act is to collapse inwards and leave nothing. Jade can understand that feeling – the way it seems like she’s always waiting for something to happen, like she can’t take a step forward without it being because it’s at the right moment for someone else. A goddess eternity in transit. She’s scared of what comes next. She’s scared of collapse.Jade thinks about loneliness and birthdays on Earth C.





	burn it back (something newer coming through)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [tallykale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tallykale/pseuds/tallykale) in the [New_Beginnings_Big_Bang_2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/New_Beginnings_Big_Bang_2019) collection. 



> wow, HELLO!! been a long time! this is a fanfiction i wrote as part of the inaugural homestuck big bang, an event where i was paired up with three lovely artists to create a work based on the idea of new beginnings. i've always loved jade and felt she was pretty shortchanged by the end of homestuck, and along with the epilogue... i just really wanted to write about her getting some sort of closure. so here it is.
> 
> many many many thanks to my artists! go check them out: [grasshope](http://grasshope.tumblr.com), [dystrack](http://dystrack.tumblr.com), and [purpletyrant](http://purpletyrant.tumblr.com). they created some amazing works of art for this fic, so go show them some love!
> 
> please enjoy!

In the first week of what is ostensibly April on Earth C, Jade Harley wakes up and realises she hasn’t talked to her brother in over a month.

(The Earth C calendar somehow functions well enough to dual-wield both human and troll systems of time measurement, so that no species had to learn how to mentally reassign a number value to the sun rising and setting. By majority, the humans outnumbered them in surviving members, but Rose had been fairly firm about not wanting to steamroll one culture by dint of having a few more living teens, especially when both numbers still stood in the single digits.)

The thought of John hits her as soon as her eyes open in the morning. _I hope he’s alright_ , she thinks, then, _oh god, I hope he’s alright_. The second time comes with a sharp involuntary exhale, like she’s been punched, and she sits up abruptly. Davepeta jumps, back arched like a startled cat. They’d been sleeping in a vaguely pretzel-like posture, with all the liquidity of a real feline, and Jade’s movement startles them awake.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, sliding her legs out from under the covers. Davepeta huffs and slides up the bed, settling into the warm dip where she’d been lying.

She lives alone, practically next door to Dave and Karkat, in a small house that is nothing like her old one, with a tiny plot for a garden that periodically exists. Right now it doesn’t. She hasn’t really had the energy to get up every day and water eight square metres of vegetables. Davepeta comes and goes like seasons, sometimes whisking away on the wind to trawl the corners of their new planet and twist into the cumulonimbus, only to return in the dead of night, curling up at the foot of Jade's double bed, rattle-rumble catbird purr rousing her from slumber. When they're around Jade finds herself cooking more, though the sprite doesn't seem to have any need for food; something about the presence of another living being with her in the house reminds her that she isn't the only person on the face of the new Earth.

Davepeta also brings with them some persistent unspeakable something. They've never truly had much to say on the question _what are we?_ (when referring to a relationship, that is; they're perfectly willing to expound upon the concentric circles and mirrors of mirrors that make up a sprite squared) and Jade carries a deep-seated kind of fear inside her that if she tries to grasp for certainty she'll only end up lonely again, like on the ship, like on earth. So she lets Davepeta whirl around her head and sleep at her feet and water her sprouts and she does fine.

And, okay, maybe there’s a loneliness in her like a black hole the shape of a green sun, and maybe she feels like she should be angry, so unspeakably angry with everyone, and sometimes she just wants to fly away and leave the atmosphere and get lost in her aspect and the millions of miles between the most misleadingly legible constellations, but that’s probably normal. Everyone went through a lot, and some people went through more, had more courage in them to face more danger, so she’s not going to go complaining to her friends about problems that they probably all have. It’s fine.

Jade walks to the door of her bedroom and uncaptchalogues her phone and opens Pesterchum, where ectoBiologist is offline. Her last few messages to him have gone unanswered, good mornings and open-ended invitations to dinner; even scrolling up through their chat history to the last time he actually replied shows a slew of short responses (haha, yeah, maybe, i guess so, me too ) and noncommittal answers to questions. He’s been distant for a while, then.

_And you didn’t notice._

No, that’s not true. She grips her phone tighter, locks it and puts it back in her sylladex so she doesn’t go searching for the first clue that John was drifting away, the first clue that she missed, that she should have picked up on so that they wouldn’t be where they are now.

She leans against the doorframe and slides down to the ground. She takes out her phone again, then puts it down on the floor.

Eyes screwed shut, she tries to reach for some easy solution. She could go over to his house right now, make sure he’s okay, spend some time with him. Remind him that he has friends who worry. But something, some flicker of fear, bites at Jade’s ankles; she thinks of meeting a locked door, a house with its lights off. Who’s to say that her visiting would fix anything? Maybe it would just push him further away, strain the ectobiological bond between them to breaking point, and then she’d only have herself to blame for it. The self fulfilling prophecy of space players and isolation, where reaching out just furthers the distance.

Maybe that haunted hollow-eyed version of Calliope had been right when she’d talked about the nature of Space; how it needs to fall back, remain dormant and passive and empty and silent until the right moment, and that even then its final act is to collapse inwards and leave nothing. Jade can understand that feeling – the way it seems like she’s always waiting for something to happen, like she can’t take a step forward without it being because it’s at the right moment for someone else. A goddess eternity in transit. She’s scared of what comes next. She’s scared of collapse.

The alternative, of course, might be even worse to think about. That at the end of all of it there _is_ no end, just this drifting sensation for the rest of her unnatural life, retreating inwards and stepping so far off the stage that it doesn’t matter that she’s gone. Jade Harley, dead or disappeared at twenty-one and change – no reward, just look up at the stars and think about her every now and then.

Twenty-one. Her birthday had been quiet, partially melded with Rose’s and Dave’s celebrations, mostly taking the form of a few gatherings with various configurations of friends and ectofamily. John had been there for a few hours, had played Monopoly and laughed at Karkat when he’d landed on Kanaya’s hotel-studded Park Lane, given Jade a tight hug before melting into the wind and out of her window. So he’d been there. Physically.

Twenty-one. It’ll be John’s birthday in a little over a week.

With a lightspeed flash Jade teleports into a standing position a few inches above the ground. Davepeta jumps a foot into the air and lands with a hiss.

“Sorry!” she calls over her shoulder, voice bright. She’s sure this is a good idea. She’s certain it’s going to make things better. “I’m going over to Dave and Karkat’s,” she says to the arching incandescence in her bed, who promptly shakes off their annoyance and zips to her side with a grin. “I’m assuming that means you’re coming too?”

“Couldn’t keep me away!” they purr.

Though teleporting would be faster, Jade takes the time to leave through the front door and fly to the other house. Davepeta hums along in her periphery. When her red ruby slippers touch down on their doormat she belatedly remembers that visits generally come with some form of etiquette; she uncaptchalogues her phone and sends something of an unnecessary message.

GG: can i come over??

TG: i have a feeling youre already outside

Jade knocks politely on the door, then opens it without waiting for a response. Dave and Karkat are both sprawled on the couch, not watching Storage Wars. Karkat waves. Over Jade’s shoulder, Davepeta does a loop-de-loop into the room and hangs at the top of the ceiling like a noxious gas.

“I think we should plan a surprise party for John’s birthday!” Jade says in lieu of a greeting. The boys raise their eyebrows in a strangely-synchronised ‘why not’ expression and push themselves into more upright sitting positions. Jade floats over to sit on their coffee table.

“Hey,” Karkat says half-heartedly, nudging her with a foot. Jade ignores him and tucks her legs to the side of her body, kicking a plastic plate onto the floor as she goes.

“Really! We can get everyone together, make a whole day of it,” she continues. “I think he’s getting worse, with his…” _Depression_ , she doesn’t say. The word sounds too much like a cold diagnosis, even if it is definitely correct. “Isolation,” is what she settles for, and even that seems too clinical for what she means: that her brother is very clearly alone and sad and cut off from his friends and family.

Karkat and Dave both hear the word she didn't say loud and clear. The two of them share a look, one of those silent communications between two people who know each other well enough that a glance can speak a sentence. Jade is decisively not jealous about it.

“Sure,” Dave says, after what is probably a whole debate's worth of eye movements with his boyfriend. “I mean, I figure we're going to be doing something, so we may as well actually do it right, rather than try and piece together a plan the night before through the gnarled modern phone tree that is a Pesterchum memo. Really make this a _party_ , right? Cake. Streamers. Get some fuckin’ clowns up in here, junior – keep those baby blues trained like a _hound_ on that red balloon, because you won't believe the bullshit wizardly majjyycks Bozo is about to pull here. You want a giraffe? A dog with a rubbery prolapsed anus for a nose? Anything for the birthday boy.”

Karkat slaps his hand over Dave's mouth. “Not that I don't love to hear you extolling the virtues of murderous highbloods at a wiggling day celebration, but I feel like you're getting a little ahead of yourself,” he says. “Wait until the party exists as something more than a concept spoken into existence two seconds ago before you go reviving Gamzee's fridged corpse and telling him to make wild animals out of inflated rubbersacs.”

Flashing him a grin, Jade nods. “Okay, let's just start at the start. What’s the first thing a party needs?”

“Behemoth leavings,” Karkat offers.

“Gross,” says Dave, pulling Karkat's hand away from his mouth. “And the answer is _obviously_ the presence of Kesha. Because, and I quote, ‘the party don’t start til I walk in’.” Karkat kicks him.

“Kesha is dead,” says Karkat, “as you have bemoaned more than once.”

Jade rolls her eyes. “Stupid, and no. It’s guests! You can’t have a party if there’s nobody there, right?” She rummages through her sylladex and emerges with a stack of paper and envelopes. “I thought it would be fun to do it the old-fashioned way, you know, instead of just messaging everyone. Make it a bit more personal.”

Dave purses his lips. “Shouldn’t we work out the actual details of it first? You know, time, place, all that.”

“Well, we already know it’s going to be on John’s birthday,” Jade says. “And at his house, probably, since I don’t know… how easy it would be to get him to go somewhere else, short of just picking him up and flying him. But that seems like a bit too much manhandling for a surprise party.”

“So we have a date and a venue,” says Karkat, taking the paper and envelopes from Jade’s hands and putting them on the table. “That sounds good to me. We can figure the other shit out as we go.”

Their social circle is small and static, which is a mixed blessing. On one hand, there's little room for newcomers or variety – mostly because they are, in the eyes of most other living beings, gods – which can make it hard to find enough people who are still willing to play Settlers of Catan. On the other, it means they only need to write a few invitations. Really, the invitations are something of a moot point; it's some formal dressing to an old Earth tradition that has little purpose in their mostly internet-based communication, but something about it has always appealed to Jade. Maybe it's _because_ she raised herself on the internet that a physical piece of paper makes things feel so much more special, some echo of the spirit in the birthday letters she and John and Rose and Dave had written to each other way back when, and even her letters to Jake, unorthodox though they may have been. Either way, it just seems right to give this occasion as much meaningless fanfare as possible. She wants it to feel like an important birthday.

Because it is. It's the most important birthday she can think of.

Which is maybe why her nerves feel so frayed and exposed; like she's two seconds away from some great emotional outburst, coordinates unknown. At the moment, as she's handing a pack of glitter gel pens to Karkat and watching his exacting gaze flick between the colours, she's reasonably sure it'll be a positive one. And that's great! As long as she's directing it in a direction that makes other people happy, she'll be okay. Nuclear fission is just a weapon in a cage of productivity.

Dave jabs Karkat right where Jade knows his grubscars are and he hisses. "What!" he snaps.

"Can we get a move on?" Dave asks. "You're deliberating like you're fuckin' Michelangelo choosing which brush to paint the scrotum highlights on the Sistine Chapel."

"Can't a guy think about his artistic choices for a second? There's so much to consider here!" Karkat sits up and gestures sharply to the pens. "I know social nuance might still waft over your head like one of God's own farts, but I thought that you would have at least picked up _something_ from me."

Jade, who can't help herself sometimes, giggles when he says fart.

"No," Karkat continues. "No. We need to _plan_ this. What colour do I write John's wiggling day invitations in?" He pulls an ultramarine gel pen from the plastic and holds it up. "Blue? His, to sound like a metafictional idiot, 'theme' colour? The one he writes in? A familiar note to open on, so that as soon as everyone opens up their mailbox in the morning they get a whiff of blueberry and remember, oh shit! That John Egbert guy is about to have lived for twenty-one Earth solar cycles!" The blue pen is laid on the table and a grey one takes its place in Karkat's hand. "What about my colour? Meaningless in this post-culling world, but still recognisable? Should we continue with the habits of our younger selves and stick to our own colours to preserve the illusion that we have any fucking right to that particular hue?" Another pen on the table, another in his hand: this time red.

Dave darts forward and holds Karkat's balled fist, sparkly pen in tow, up higher. "Revolution!" he cries. "Are you saying you're _finally_ ready to seize the means of production with me?" Karkat scowls and snatches his hand away.

It's about then that Jade notices it; or, rather, the lack of it. The awkwardness. The touch of unease that both Dave and Karkat seem to subconsciously carry whenever Jade is near. Some festering byproduct of the stupid feelings that come with teenagerhood combined with the foolish few months Jade had spent after the inception of Earth C following them around like a puppy waiting for scraps: the only two boys Jade had ever had a crush on, and here they were, made for each other. She tried, really tried, to fit herself into the new shape she woke up to, a specific configuration of the three of them that could maybe, _definitely_ , make all of them happy and fulfill the dreams they all had at thirteen. But Dave and Karkat had changed, somehow. And eventually Jade realised that wanting something at thirteen doesn't mean you'll want it forever. So she stopped hanging out with them as incessantly – tried to garden, thought about Davepeta as more than a kiss and a stab, dreamed about girls every now and then. But the smoke lingered. And it lingers now.

Except when they aren't talking to her.

Karkat is trying to bite Dave's arm as he gives a shaky retelling of Karl Marx's basic ideas when something starts to bubble over in Jade. "Can we get back to the invitations?" she says, maybe a little too sharply.

The boys break off from their play fight to look at her, and then the regret hits – she ruined the mood. Rather than let the shame swallow her momentum, though, she leans into it, and frowns. It's almost a questioning gesture until she actively schools her eyebrows downwards.

"We were just having some fun," Dave says, a little mystified. "I heard you laugh at Karkat's fart joke, Harley, don't lie to me."

Something about his almost-condescending tone, like he knows what she's angry about (and how could he, when she barely knows herself?), makes her see red for a moment. Jade floats off the table a little and narrows her eyes. “You’re always just having some fun,” she says. “Can you take anything _seriously_?”

That makes Karkat hiss in a short breath. “Jade,” he says, sharply. “Fucking chill out. Sorry for, I don’t know, not being stressed about John’s wiggling day?” He shrugs and dutifully hunches over the table with the red pen, starting to address an invitation to Rose. “Or whatever it is I’ve managed to fuck up this time.”

And _there_ is the crux of it all. They don’t actually _care_ about anything she does. They have no idea how she feels, reaching frantically out to the wisps of everyone around her as they move on with their lives. They got their happy ending with each other; they’re going to get sick of entertaining the dumb puppy sooner or later. Shame and guilt and anger churn in her stomach like a building storm.

“Well, _I'm_ sorry for caring about my _only brother_ who hasn't talked to anyone in _weeks_!” Jade says, voice cracking. “I didn't realise that was so inconvenient!” Her fingers crackle with the memory of the Green Sun, its monumental anger.

“Jade–”

She turns away and flies through the open door, letting out a frustrated growl punctuated by a slam.

Dave pushes his sunglasses up above his tired eyes and flashes Karkat a worried glance. “I’ll talk to her,” he says, already floating towards the door.

“I – I fucked up,” Karkat says. “Can you tell her I’m sorry? Like, genuinely. I am.” He groans. “I don’t know what set her off, apart from me taking a fat dump all over her feelings or something, but… ugh. Sorry.”

Nodding, Dave gives him a thumbs up and follows Jade outside. She could be anywhere in existence by now, and he’s almost ready to squint and look for her timeline trail when he hears crying from behind the house. He doesn’t even need canine hearing to pick it up and it breaks his heart a little.

He drops to the ground and walks slowly, almost casual, around the side of the house. There’s no garden – neither occupant is in possession of a thumb anywhere near green – but there is a small shed where they keep various tools nobody uses. Jade is sitting on the ground, back to the tin, clenching her fists in the grass and trying unsuccessfully to stop crying. Her ears flick up at Dave’s approach.

“What,” she says flatly.

“Can I sit down?” he asks.

She doesn’t reply, just twists her ears back and tucks her chin in a sharp single nod. The gesture is almost angry, so Dave sits cross-legged on the grass a few feet away and doesn’t press. Silence stretches, broken here and there by a sniff from Jade.

Finally, she turns to look at him, eyes puffy and red. “Aren’t you going to ask what’s wrong?” she says, nearly a growl.

Dave blinks. The thought hits him that he hasn’t really seen Jade angry, truly angry, outside of her momentary grimbarkness and the dropped barriers that state of mind had carried with it; she always seems to have a smile on her face, even in the most stressful situations the game had thrown at them. Seeing her like this – shaking, fracturing – makes him realise that maybe there’s a reason for that.

“Do you want me to?” he replies.

“Why does it suddenly matter what _I_ want?”

The venom in her voice makes Dave flinch. “It… it always matters, Jade. Can you – tell me what’s wrong? Or what I can do to help? Please.”

Jade pushes her glasses up and presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You can give me back all the times I could have done something important,” she mutters.

“You… what?” Dave says. “What do you _mean_ , Jade? We couldn’t have done anything without you. You know that.”

She makes a frustrated noise. “It just – you don’t understand! It feels like... I was asleep for everything. I never – nothing I did made a difference! I spent so much of the game just _sleeping_ , just _waiting_ to wake up and participate, waiting for someone else to come in and _let_ me do things. And for most of my life, I was okay with that! I thought that me being asleep still _meant_ something! Like I was learning important things on Prospit, or that I could have an impact on things from a distance. But nothing I knew ever really mattered. Rose became the bastion of knowledge that I tried so hard to pretend I was. John saved the world, because what else could his destiny have been? And even you, who went on and fucking on about not being a hero, actually _did_ something in the end. In the final battle, you _were_ a hero.” Her feet start to lift off the ground and she clenches her fists. “But me? I didn’t _do_ anything. Frog breeding – sure, you helped me run around and clone a bunch of frogs. I went god tier and got us through the yellow yard. And after that… then what? Stayed on a ship functionally alone for three years after my brother and best friend _died_ in front of me, only to find out later that _that had to happen_ for the sake of the TIMELINE!”

She’s floating now, eyes brimming with tears and hair whipping in space’s invisible throes.

“My brother was _gone_ ! And the one who came back was one who got to spend those three years _with_ me! So why don’t I get that? Why am I the one who has to remember that _my brother is dead_ ?!” she yells. “And even when I finally thought I was going to see my friends again, when I thought I could talk to someone who would understand – I wasn’t in control anymore!” She runs a shaky hand through her hair, almost laughing. “Do you know what’s really fucked up about me? I _liked_ being angry. When I was grimbark, that time I spent being _evil_ , I wanted it to last longer so I’d have an excuse to be angry. Isn’t that _so fucking crazy_?”

She takes a moment to shake her head, smiling with strained lips. A humourless laugh forces its way out of her.

“So I’m finally, _finally_ done with being a doormat, and ready to be the villain, and then – guess what – I’m asleep. And I get told that – again! – I’m just supposed to _wait_. That it’s in my nature to be alone. That I don’t get a starring role in my own life.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is? How angry I am all the time, but I can’t talk about it without hurting people?”

“It’s okay,” Dave says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “You can be angry. You’re always allowed to be angry.”

“Am I, though?” she snaps. “Aren’t I just supposed to be the happy cheery ditzy weird girl who props up everyone else’s stories and ends up throwing herself into a black hole for the sake of the real stars?”

“No!” cries Dave. “And I – god, I didn’t know, Jade. You shouldn’t have to hold all of this shit in. You can always reach out. You can always talk to us.” He reaches a hand up to her sleeve. “I’m sorry that you thought you had to do this alone. I’m sorry I made you think that.”

And that, the tug of a friend on her arm, makes her finally explode. She screams out wordless sorrow and fury that makes the air shake and tears spill down her taut cheeks. Dave stands still, though his instinct is to shy away from the noise, and keeps a hand steady on the fabric of her shirt. A guiding weight, ready for when she comes down.

She does, after a time. They’re lucky that they live in the troll boonies, tucked behind a hill and separate from the conglomerates of lawnrings that scatter the rural troll kingdom; Jade’s huffed and puffed enough to blow a hundred hives down. But the wind seems to falter in her lungs and her breath hitches, and it’s like she burned the poison out in one fell swoop. The wound is still there – something left festering for so long can’t be healed in a minute, maybe even a lifetime – but the infection isn’t spreading to her heart anymore. She feels better. She lets out a great shuddering sigh and drops to her feet again.

Dave’s creased brow relaxes a fraction, but he doesn’t let go of her sleeve until she twists her arm slightly, just enough to remind him of his tight knuckles. He shakes his hands loose self-consciously and gives her an anxious stare. “Okay?” he ventures, voice shaky. The tremor in his voice makes Jade shameful for a moment, but not enough to take back her tirade. “That was… a lot. Do you need some water? Or… I… where did that all come from?”

She nearly laughs, and then her voice gets watery again and she blinks it away. “I’m just _worried_ , Dave,” she says, voice edging into wild wolf whine as her ears lay flat against her hair. “Can’t I worry about my brother?” She sits down on the ground, impact softened by the god-instinct to float, and wraps her skinny arms around her knees. She looks all of thirteen and twenty-one and an eon at the same time, and even though Dave knows the exact age of every atom in her skin, he’d believe that she’s older than any universe. Jade’s hands tighten in the fabric of her sleeves.

“I just – sometimes – I forget, you know?” she says, small. “You know what I mean.”

Dave does. Sometimes he’s back in Houston, sweat gathering between his shoulderblades and a knife-edge tension in all of his muscles, waiting for a shadow that he expects to see around every corner – or he’s back on LOHAC, the heat, again, pounding in time with the gears and the endless counting, loop here cross there make a right turn before the grave marker – or even on LOFAF, in the bright flashbang green of strifing with Noir and the hollow echo of his torso strung through with friendly fire. All the different places he can find himself, the different times, when the tail end of a dream leaves him with deja-vu hanging on every sense; he understands exactly what Jade means.

“It was so – after it happened, I kept thinking I must have been dreaming. Or that I just was _wrong_ somehow.” Her voice is muffled from where she pushes her face down into the hollow of her hunched body. Dave crouches down next to her but doesn’t touch. “And I kept checking my phone, like he was going to message me, saying it was just a stupid prank. But he never did. And – it was–” She breaks off, bringing her head back up to meet Dave’s gaze with the saddest, deepest green he’s ever seen. “Three years is _so long_ , Dave.”

He nods. “I know,” he says quietly, because he _does_ know, exactly how many seconds Jade spent with a brother assumed dead, how long she went without a friend both before and after; he can’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t make him sound like an asshole, so he stays quiet, and when Jade starts to cry, he reaches out a hand and puts it gently on her knee.

“It’s just been getting worse.” Jade scrubs tears from her eyes and sniffs. “I feel like I haven’t seen him in forever, and most of the time he doesn’t reply to my messages, and it’s – I try so hard, so so so hard, to remind myself that he isn’t – isn’t dead on LOWAS, he’s here and he’s – not _okay_ , but _alive_ , and – but – it never sticks. I’m always so scared, Dave.” Her shoulders drop like saying the words out loud took more energy than she has in her. “And I know that everyone has – you know, _issues_. But I just feel so sad and scared all the time.”

Dave reaches forward and wraps his arms around her, chin tucked in the junction of neck and shoulder.

“Do you think this was a stupid idea?” Jade asks, her voice tiny and shaking.

“No,” Dave says decisively. “No way. It's a great idea.” He holds her for another four point three seconds and then pulls back to look her in the eyes. “You know we're all here for you, right? Even John. He might be doing his dumpass self-imposed isolation thing, but don't think for a second that he wouldn't give the world for you.” Jade doesn't say anything, but she pushes her glasses up to wipe her eyes. “I think it's a real important thing you're doing. You’re throwing him a line, and god damn, we are going to get a hook into that tender young man meat if it’s the last thing we do.”

“Dave!” Jade says, trying to keep a laugh out of her words even as tears roll down her cheeks. “You are so gross, oh my god.” But she lets her head rest on his shoulder again, and it’s like they’re thirteen and best friends and the world hasn’t yet ripped them raw.

* * *

Jade leaves an awkward silence. Dave manages to take some of it with him when he follows her, which makes the subsequent atmosphere of the room only a bit more tense than average. Karkat flattens his lips into a thin line and decides that he doesn’t need to go with the two humans, and that his presence would probably be more of a distraction to healthy emotional closure than anything else. Davepeta has apparently come to the same conclusion, as they’re still floating, distractingly neon, in the periphery of Karkat’s vision.

Despite the personal connections Karkat has to two-thirds of Davepeta’s genetic (do sprites have genes?) makeup, he hasn’t actually ever had anything resembling an extended conversation with them; they’re with Jade sometimes when she comes to spend time at his and Dave’s hive, but Dave still isn’t exactly sure how to interact with them, so Karkat is happy to let them be the annoying trunkbeast in the room. On top of the uncertainty on Dave’s behalf, the specific intersection of the personalities and memories of a doomed Dave and the Nepeta whose death he was indirectly responsible for make him feel a twisting guilt below his bloodpusher.

But maybe this is just a day for having uncomfortable conversations and unloading baggage. Some strange sympathetic emotional reaction to Jade’s stress, plus the fact that the silence between him and Davepeta is growing deafening, pulls at Karkat’s tongue.

He looks at them sidelong, squinting under messy hair. “So you're–”

“I'm not Dave,” they say, despite the lingering Texan that loops in their voice. “And I'm not Nepeta. Not any more than I'm a dead crow.” They're hovering, wings folded in a show of laughable redundancy, above the coffee table. “That is to say, I _am_ those things. But different. And more.”

“Of course,” Karkat says, rolling his eyes. “I forgot how easy it is to talk to sprites. You just _love_ to be as clear and comprehensible as possible, huh?” He hunches over the paper – _to Rose Maryam-Lalonde and_ – and keeps writing, not as neat as he had been when he'd started the task, but certainly still legible.

Davepeta floats and spins upside down, boneless, craning their neck to read. “You're writing in Alternian again.”

He looks at where he wrote Kanaya's name and realises that his neon companion is right. “Fuck!” Karkat says, grabbing the paper and balling it up in a frustrated fist. He throws it at the opposite wall, petulant, and sits back on his heels. “I don't know why Jade asked _me_ to do this.” Then he blinks, and looks up at Davepeta, and says, “Again?”

“Again,” they repeat, like they think Karkat might have forgotten what the word means. “You do it a lot. Haven't, fur a while, but we all have our habits.” They flap their wings unnecessarily and cross the room to pick up the crumpled invitation.

“What the fuck do you know about my _habits_ , Davepeta?” Karkat asks, frowning. “You're never around long enough to have a goddamn conversation with, much less to observe my supposed writing mishaps.”

The sprite squared giggles, very like Nepeta and very unlike Dave, and tosses the paper back at Karkat. It hits him between the eyes and bounces onto the table. “I know as much about you as every Dave and every Nepeta,” they say, smirking. “I've got full access to this Karkat collage across all pawssible timelines; every time you met the people that make up who I am. They're all in me.” They nudge their aviators down the bridge of their nose and look him in the eye, pupils slit and irises orange and green and, Karkat knows, nocturnal reflective.

“Is that a sprite thing?” Karkat asks, mildly perturbed, “or a sprite squared thing? Or a… time and heart player thing.”

“Does it matter?” Davepeta replies. “I'm happy, and I'm weird as hell, and Dave and Nepeta are both happy, so why bother asking questions about how it works?” They fly a loop in the small room. “If you want, I can talk about how it feels to be the culmination of three entities and two sepurrate game constructs, but I have a feeling you wouldn't understand.”

Part of Karkat wants to argue, but another part of him knows that they're right, so he shuts his open mouth with a click. He can hear a raised voice outside, muffled through the hive’s walls. He's silent for all of two seconds before he says, “So you have all of Nepeta's memories?”

Davepeta nods. “ _All_ of them,” they say. “That wasn't meant as, like, innuendo, by the way. Or a Vriska reference. I just meant all of them, from every version of her.”

Karkat looks away, picking up the screwed up invitation and smoothing it out. “I feel like I really fucked things up with Nepeta and I never got to apologise,” he mutters. “We saw plenty of Nepetas in the bubbles – and I've done my fair share of feeling guilty for all of the doomed ones, like I could have done something to stop them from being pruned by the shitty discerning hand of paradox space – but I don't think I ever saw my – our Nepeta. The one I definitely am responsible for killing.” He runs his claws over the edges of the paper gently, flattening creases. “And that's you, I guess. The one that got put in the sprite.”

“I guess!” Davepeta says, floating on their stomach. “Did you want clawsure? Beclaws I don't know if I'm clawlified to do that. Oh, yikes, check that terminal claw-saturation! Gotta get me some fresher cat puns! Like I keep saying, I'm _Davepeta_. Just because Nepeta is a part of me doesn't mean I can speak fur her.”

Their flippant nature is getting under Karkat's skin like a parasitic insect; he holds back a frustrated growl and rolls his eyes. “Can you be serious for two fucking seconds, _maybe_ ? Look, I'm sorry for being sad about my dead friend, and I feel just _awful_ for raining on your perpetually chipper hybrid parade, but god!”

Davepeta blinks. They bite their cleft lip with pastel fangs and Karkat remembers with an unpleasant jolt how often Nepeta would do that when she was thinking. “Okay,” they say. “Sorry.” They flip again and float down to sit cross-legged on the floor. Karkat taps his foot noisily, a nervous tic he's never been able to shake, not wanting to break the awkward silence he's assembled like a structurally unsound fort. Davepeta sighs. “She was nefur mad at you, Karkat,” they say, and Karkat closes his eyes, screwing them shut like the sprite is an afterimage he can concentrate away, like he can open his eyes and he'll stop seeing the corporeal ghost of his shitty mistakes. “She always knew that you weren't going to choose her, and that you were an asshole to her sometimes, but she was never mad about it. Not about her dying, either.”

“Okay,” he says. “No. She should have been mad. She should have been fucking furious.” He stubbornly keeps his eyes shut. “It's been so long, and I keep thinking about how I should have done things differently. If I hadn't told Equius to go stop Gamzee, he wouldn't have died for no reason and she wouldn't have had to try for revenge. Or, I don't know, if I'd just been a better leader in the first place. Whatever.”

“You can't act like you're the only one who ever made a mistake,” Davepeta says. “You didn't force Nepeta to attack Gamzee. She did that. And maybe there was a way to keep her out of danger, maybe if you'd said something or done something or made one crucial decision you could have changed things – but Karkat, it isn't always about _you_.” An edge of rumble-click troll subvocalisations roll into their words. “You can't pretend that everything happens because of you.”

“I know,” Karkat says, finally opening his eyes. “Even if I had done something, all that would have come of it is a doomed timeline where everyone would have been picked off by paradox space anyway. But it's just – ugh!” He throws his hands up in frustration. “So unfair how the alpha timeline works. Like Nepeta just _had_ to die for things to be ‘right’.” His fingers hook excessive doubt around the word. “It's stupid. I miss all of my other friends that got shafted for the sake of things going the way they were meant to.”

All Davepeta can do is nod. “Me too. But we can't do anything about it anymore. We just have to… work with what we've got.” They smile and motion to their own body. “I don't think any part of me could have guessed that they'd end up being a cat-bird-troll-human-sprite by the end of this game, but that's just how things ended up.”

Karkat has to roll his eyes at that, but before he can snap a retort the door opens and closes and Jade and Dave come back inside. Karkat can smell that they've both been crying but doesn't say anything because he isn't _always_ a colossal asshole who sticks his foot right down his nutrient shaft like he can make a career out of it. Davepeta, for their part, reaches forward and cheekily ruffles his hair before zipping through the air and back to the general vicinity of Jade.

“I’m sorry,” Karkat says, running a hand through what could loosely be called his bangs. “I don’t know if you want to tear into me about it, or whatever, but… I am. Bonafide Karkat Vantas apology for you, stamped and signed.” He sighs. “I didn’t realise how much this meant to you.”

Jade gives him a weak half-smile. “Forgiven,” she says. “I didn’t exactly handle that in the most… mature way, I guess. Do you still want to help with this?”

He glances down at where he’s re-crumpled the invitation and blinks. “As long as you pick the colours,” he says. “You always had the best eye for it out of any of us.”

The gel pens are scattered on the table. Jade contemplates them in deep thought. “Blue,” she says. “I liked what you said, before. About how it makes people think of him.”

Karkat reaches for another piece of craft paper and the ultramarine pen. After he writes both Rose and Kanaya’s names in perfect English, he glances across the room at Davepeta, floating in an invisible eddy, and adds the same underneath in Alternian.

* * *

GG: Hello, Jade! :B  
GG: hi!  
GG: I won’t dilly-dally on the topic of this conversation. You see, I seem to be the victim of a dastardly prank! You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, hmm?  
GG: :o  
GG: no siree! not a prank in sight! or smell for that matter  
GG: Is that right?  
GG: Because I have a sneaking suspicion that my initialistic doppelganger could be responsible for the heart attack I just about had!  
GG: !!!  
GG: omg you are joking though right  
GG: Hoo hoo, yes. It just made me jump when a card zapped right into my face!  
GG: Consider this our RSVP. Roxy’s reading over my shoulder and Callie’s having a nap, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t miss this for the world.  
GG: hiiiiiii jadeyyyyyytttt  
GG: hi roxy!!  
GG: lokl hard 2 type when jane keeps MOVING THE PONE  
GG: :P  
GG: What a rude interloper. Who was that?  
GG: I have absolutely no idea who just commandeered my phone and so cruelly ignored Miss Autocorrect’s kind suggestions.  
GG: TAHT JUST MAKS ME SOUND LIKE A MEAN SEXY PIRATE  
GG: omggg stop stop im laughing too hard!!!  
GG: im so glad you guys are coming though!!  
GG: Of course! This is the sort of thing I think we’ve all been needing.  
GG: John more than any of us, though.  
GG: yeah :(  
GG: It’s a really good thing you’re doing! I wish I’d thought of it.  
GG: it can even be your party too if you want!!  
GG: aagh sorry for not checking if you were already planning something first, i should have asked  
GG: Oh, don’t be silly! It’s fine.  
GG: ahh still  
GG: now i feel really selfish asking if you can bring food for the party >__>  
GG: Not selfish at all! I’d love to do some baking.  
GG: Although, I rather think this warrants more than just some plain old sponge and buttercream.  
GG: oh!!! maybe we could all meet at yours and everyone could help make the food!!  
GG: and then were all already together so it makes it easy to get everything to johns house  
GG: That sounds wonderful! It wouldn’t take too long to fix a perfect birthday spread, as long as I have plenty of assistants.  
GG: :DDDD  
GG: thank youuuuu!!!!  
GG: Thank YOU!  
GG: noo thank YOU  
GG: thank ROXY  
GG: hehehehe  
GG: yknow ill go with that!  
GG: Hoo hoo hoo. :B  
GG: I’ll see you on the 13th, then. Nice and early!  
GG: yes!! see you then jane!!  
GG: Bye, Jade!

* * *

TT: Is it safe to assume that you're the culprit behind the invitation that just materialised in my kitchen five seconds ago?  
TT: The handwriting is beautiful.  
GG: yes!!  
GG: im glad you got it :D  
GG: also thats karkats handwriting but ill pass the compliment along  
TT: It was kind of a rhetorical question, given the fact that nobody else I know can teleport items right into my bowl of Sultana Bran.  
GG: hehe  
TT: You know, you could have asked us in person. It feels like it's been ages since we all hung out.  
GG: i knooow thats the point!  
GG: also i just like sending letters :P  
GG: so can you come??  
TT: Of course. Kanaya is already planning both of our outfits.  
GG: hi kanaya!  
TT: She says hi.  
GG: ok so now that ive invited you umm  
GG: can you also help with setting up some stuff for the party >_>  
TT: So this wasn't totally magnanimous, was it?  
TT: There's always a catch.  
GG: roooose  
TT: Jade.  
TT: I'm only joking. Of course we'll help out.  
GG: thank you!!  
GG: were all getting together at the crockerlondeiopes the morning of the party  
TT: Good lord, what a fucking Frankenstein’s monster of a portmanteau.  
TT: I wish they’d just hyphenate already. It’s the civilised thing to do.  
GG: i dont think theyre married though?  
TT: Who cares? They may as well be.  
TT: The legal intricacies of marital status mean close to nothing to us, we who are unto gods of this fragile world.  
GG: i mean i guess you are right…  
GG: they could just say theyre married and whos going to stop them???  
TT: Exactly. Not to encourage evasion of equal treatment under the law, but nobody would really, actually, give a shit if they said they were married.  
GG: but then theyd miss out on a wedding and thats the BEST part!  
TT: You’ve got me there.  
GG: :P i knew i did miss teen marriage  
TT: Oh, shut it.  
TT: Yes, I would love to see my motherdaughter and their de facto wives make a spectacle out of it, but all I’m saying is it would save us a lot of trouble if they’d just pick a collective last name.  
GG: ok miss maryam-lalonde  
TT: That sure is my name.  
GG: :P  
TT: :P back at you.  
TT: Anyway, you can expect Kanaya and I there to help out in any way we’re needed.  
GG: itll probably be stuff like food and music and all that so like nothing super hard  
TT: Oh, I’m sure we can handle it.  
TT: I really am excited. I think this will be good for him.  
GG: yeah  
GG: me too!  
GG: ok see you later rose thank you!!  
TT: See you later, Jade.

* * *

GT: What ho jade!  
GT: I hear youre planning a little shindig eh.  
GG: you bet!!  
GG: its been waaaay too long since we all caught up yknow  
GT: Thats true enough. I really cant think of the last time i saw john out and about come to think of it.  
GT: He was over for a movie marathon but that must have been a couple months ago now…  
GG: and thats exactly why im doing this!  
GT: Well you can bet your bottom boondollar ill be there!  
GT: Dirk too if he can tear himself away from the new project haha.  
GG: :o whats he making??  
GT: You know im not actually sure what the hell it is. Ill ask him really quick.  
GG: ok!  
GT: He said its like a roomba but with home security capabilities.  
GG: like a knife?  
GT: I think hes going for some higher firepower on this critter.  
GT: Speaking of i think hes set his shirt on fire again. I should probably be supervising this!  
GG: oh good lord  
GG: dont burn to death before johns birthday!!  
GG: also were all meeting up at jane callie and roxys house before the party to get food and festivities ready!! it would be a big help if you could come  
GT: Why of course mlady!  
GT: Consider it done. *doffs hat*  
GG: lol okay  
GG: ill let you extinguish your boy now! and ill see you on the 13th!  
GT: Seeya then jade!

* * *

GC: WH4T 1S TH1S  
GG: an invitation!  
GC: NO 1 GOT TH4T, 1T W4S 4 RH3TOR1C4L QU3ST1ON  
GC: 1 M34NT WHY D1D YOU S3ND M3 TH1S  
GG: everyones getting rhetorical today jeez  
GG: becaaauuuse we want you to come?? durr  
GC: 1N C4S3 YOU H4DN'T NOT1C3D  
GC: 1'M OUT 1N TH3 FURTH3ST R1NG ON 4 V3RY 1MPORT4NT S34RCH M1SS1ON TH4T 1'M NOT GO1NG TO DROP SO W3 C4N 4LL C3L3BR4T3 TH3 D4Y 3GB3RT CR4WL3D FROM SOM3 4DULT HUM4N’S D1SGUST1NG OR1F1C3  
GG: he was made in a lab and you know it!!  
GC: H3H3H3 1 KNOW 1 JUST TH1NK NORM4L HUM4N R3PRODUCT1ON 1S FUNNY  
GG: lol it is kind of funny  
GG: but thats not the point!  
GG: im not saying you should stop looking for her  
GG: im just saying…  
GG: i did send you two invitations!  
GC: HMM  
GC: OK4Y  
GC: NO PROM1S3S  
GC: BUT 1F 1 G3T B4CK TO 34RTH B3FOR3 JOHN C3R3MON14LLY GROWS 4NOTH3R HUM4N Y34R OLD3R  
GC: 1 M1GHT JUST S33 1F W3 CAN M4K3 1T  
GG: awesome!! thank you terezi  
GG: how is it going out there btw?  
GC: OH YOU KNOW  
GC: LOTS OF CR4CKS 1N TH3 F1RM4M3NT OF R34L1TY  
GC: GHOSTS  
GC: TH3 USU4L  
GG: well good luck!  
GC: TH4NK YOU >:]  
GC: BUT 1F TH1NGS GO W3LL TH3N 1'LL B3 COM1NG 1NTO 4LL TH3 LUCK 1N TH3 UN1V3RS3 SOON 3NOUGH  
GG: :)  
GG: earth has been feeling a lot quieter without your nasty laugh everywhere  
GG: and i think you two would make some pretty awesome surprise guests  
GC: WOW!  
GC: COM1NG 4T M3 W1TH TH3 MOB1US DOUBL3 1NSULT COMPL1M3NT R34CH4ROUND 1 S33  
GG: well im just trying to keep up with you!  
GC: LOL, N3V3R GO1NG TO H4PP3N  
GC: BUT K33P TRY1NG, H4RL3Y  
GC: 4ND 1 M1GHT JUST S33 YOU SOON  
GG: :D  
GG: dont fall in a black hole!! bye terezi!!  
GC: NOT PL4NN1NG ON 1T  
GC: BY3, J4D3

* * *

Terezi had made it almost an entire sweep on the new Earth before she decided to, once again, take matters into her own hands.

(“I’ll come back,” she remembers Vriska saying, honest as anything, before they all went off to fight various denominations of big bad. “When it’s over. When we’ve won.”

Terezi had held Vriska’s face gently in the palm of one hand, cradled the cool skin and felt the truth of her words in her smiling cheeks. “You’d better,” she’d said. “I’ll be so mad if you get yourself killed.”

“All the angels in paradox space couldn’t keep me away.”)

Apparently there had been more angels than Vriska was expecting.

She rockets past the husk of a dreambubble, empty of memories and ghosts. A lot of the bubbles she’s been passing recently (insofar as ‘recently’ means anything in the Furthest Ring) have been similarly abandoned, a reaction to the cracks that are steadily creeping through the firmament of reality. The black hole continues to pull everything into its maw, Terezi knows, but she’s far enough away from it that she can’t feel its effects at the moment. Once or twice she’d toyed with the idea of flying right for the belly of the beast and taking her chances with the event horizon, seeing if the collapse of existence was where she needed to be looking, but every time she skirted the edge of the whirling expanse a voice in the back of her head had said _Losing faith already, Redglare?_ and her jetpack had tilted back to the void. Keep that one as a last resort. One final card in her back pocket if her nose fails her.

Weaving between two dreambubbles about to merge, Terezi dips her hand into the surface of a memory. It’s daytime on the other side, somewhere on Earth; hot, but not blistering enough to be the Alternian sun. Maybe a martyred Dave is dreaming of home. Sometimes she searches the bubbles themselves, hoping to find an avalanche of rubble or see a hunched castle on a cliff shimmer into being in front of her, but she mostly tends to get caught up in the dead friends – and loneliness is starting to become her. She isn’t in the mood to swoop through an Earth cityscape and coach her hundredth dead Dave through his afterlife.

Instead of dipping into the bubble, she points her body upward – or the closest facsimile in this non-space – and starts lazily spiralling through the air. She closes her eyes and lets the pulse of her Mind send out its threads. It’s a passive way of broadening her search: scan a hundred imminent futures for a sign, and take that path. She doesn’t do it a lot; she’s uncomfortably aware that if she were actually a god tier then the process would be much more effective, and these feeble brushes with her aspect usually just lead her in circles, because the string of cause and effect in the Furthest Ring is affected much like its warping of time and space. She isn’t expecting anything near success when she reaches out this time. It’s just another scrape at a concrete wall with a plastic spoon.

True to form, her projected futures are maddeningly vague. It’s hard to mine this sea of infinite possibility for the concrete assuredness of Mind, even harder when she has nothing to go on but her own determination and memories. If she knew anything at all about what Vriska had been thinking, what she had wanted, _why she didn’t come back_ – then she might get somewhere.

But she’d forgotten that decision was not the only factor in play, here, and fortune ever favours the bold.

And after a sweep and a half of ceaseless, tireless searching; after countless dreams and memories and dead friends and dead strangers; after rejecting despair so many times it curls like a familiar love at the base of her spine, Terezi rounds the curve of a crack in space and comes face to face with the end of it all. Her boots the most delicious red, her godhood orange as the sun, and her eyes – her _eyes_ – oh, her eyes. Terezi stops short and smells the bright yellow and black of her eyes and knows that this could never be a ghost.

What ghost could look at her so sweetly?

What ghost could smell like finally, finally coming home?

“You came,” she says, _she_ says, _Vriska_ says, shocked and sincere in a way that she never allows herself to be. The strange gravity of the Furthest Ring floats her hair gently around her head like a halo.

Terezi reaches out like Vriska is a wild cholerbear, hand shaking and almost afraid to make contact. Like this is all a dream and her fingers won’t meet flesh but instead the same non-cold void that surrounds her. A flutter of fairy dust closes the distance and Terezi’s hand beaches itself on Vriska’s cheek clumsily, a claw pressed into the point where laughter often brings dimples to the surface. And that, the bending of a joint and the equal and opposite reaction to her action of searching for so long, that finally makes it _real_.

She found her.

Her hand curls down around Vriska’s jaw, who leans into it and shuts her eyes hard, reaching her own hands out to find purchase on Terezi’s hips. They hang there for a moment, suspended, like dancers trapped in amber, and then Terezi breathes in sharply and pulls her hand back and punches Vriska right in the solar plexus. She lets out a soft _uh_!, flying back a few feet from the force of the hit, and spins almost head over heels before she gets the clarity of mind to correct her momentum.

“What was that for!” she cries, moving back towards Terezi but keeping her distance this time. “We were having a _romantic moment_ , idiot!”

“You _lied_!” Terezi shrieks.

Vriska blinks and furrows her brows in suspicion. “Yes,” she says. “I did. Or I used to. I’m trying to be better now. What am I on trial for?”

“You said you’d come back!” Terezi shouts. “I waited for you! Everyone else got their happy ending on Earth C. They all won. But you said you’d come back and you _lied_ !” She bares her teeth. “I thought it might take you a while to find us, sure. So I waited there and listened to the stars for a _sweep_ , Vriska, and nobody wanted to say it but I know they all thought that I was waiting for a ghost.” Some of the fight goes out of her tense shoulders, her voice starting to shake with emotion. “And I almost thought that too.”

Vriska opens her mouth to protest, but Terezi points a finger at her accusingly. “The prosecution has not finished making her statement!” she crows. Vriska bites her tongue. “But if there’s one thing I learned from my alternate self, it’s that you have to _do things yourself_ . So I said goodbye to everyone and flew out of the universe and started searching a place with no conceivable geometry from top to bottom, all for _you_. Because there was nothing on that planet for me if you weren’t with me.”

A dreambubble drifts past them, close enough that Vriska can see her soap-rainbow reflection – and those eyes welling up with cerulean tears can’t be hers, can they? Because Terezi just said what she’d been so sure she wouldn’t hear after all these moonless perigees: that she was worth it. That she didn’t regret rewriting reality to bring them back together and together and together.

“The prosecution rests,” Terezi says, image of the severe legislacerator undermined by her wobbling lip, and Vriska rushes forward to meet her in a kiss before she even really knows she’s doing it. Act first, think later; the perpetual motto of the gamblignant, of the thief, of the foolhardy in love. Terezi kisses her back and Vriska thinks she might die.

And if anything she ever did was Heroic and Just all in one, it would be the loving and being loved of Terezi Pyrope.

They could have spent a minute or an hour or a whole dim season drifting like that, heady with reunion, but Terezi finally manages to pull herself away. She grins. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s go.” Holding both of Vriska’s hands, she starts to fly backwards.

Vriska pouts, digging her figurative heels in. “Whyyy?” she whines. “Time isn’t real here, baby. We’ve got nothing waiting.”

Terezi smirks, pulling an envelope out of her sylladex. “You’ve been out of the loop, Serket!” she says, holding it out for her to take. She does so uncertainly, as if this is going to be some elaborate jape for the sake of prankster’s gambit; Terezi’s jokes have always been more subtle than the bog-standard exploding letter, though, so she figures she’s safe.

She pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper with achingly familiar handwriting. Who knew eventually even Karkat’s penmanship would spark nostalgia? Floating through the back alleys of paradox space will do things to your psyche, apparently.

“Vriska Serket,” she reads. “You are warmly invited to…” She trails off. “It’s John’s wiggling day?”

“Not yet,” Terezi replies. “But we’d better get a move on if we’re planning on making it there before his next one!” She raises an eyebrow and jets backward on her rocket wings another few feet, forcing Vriska to belatedly flap her wings to make up the distance.

“We – we’re out in the back alleys of the Furthest Ring, Terezi,” Vriska says. “I don’t think I could scrape up enough luck to get us there by next _perigee_.”

“Well,” Terezi smirks, taking Vriska by the hand and leading her confidently around the vast iridescent swell of a dreambubble, “do you think a chance meeting is in the cards?”

The gears in Vriska’s thinkpan turn for a moment, rusty; she hasn’t exactly had much to think about except staying out of reach of the vacuum of the black hole and ruminating on what to do when even the Furthest Ring runs out of space for her to flee into. A chance meeting. Who exactly does Terezi expect to run into out here that could be in any way beneficial to getting back to Earth? Space powers could cover leaps and bounds in a few steps, but the few god tier Jades in the bubbles tend to seek their solitude. God tier Maryams are even less common and, in terms of utilisation of powers, less useful than an active Witch’s manipulation. And even then, the Furthest Ring’s physics are notoriously elastic, concentric; space and time, rather than existing on an interconnected grid like they do in most places, are far more unreliable and volatile.

Time.

“Are you telling me Aradia is out here?” Vriska says incredulously. “ _Still_?”

Terezi shrugs, the movement made awkward by the arm stretched behind her, pulling Vriska along. “She’s not on Earth C. She always loved the ghosts a little too much. Where else would she be?” They swoop low to avoid a glowing white crack. “Sollux too, I think.”

A grin slowly works its way onto Vriska’s face. Taking a shot in the dark? Rolling the dice to try and find a friend in the wild black yonder that could take her home – or what could be, will be home, now that she knows Terezi wants that, has always wanted that – that’s the kind of gamble she still wants to make.

“Well, let’s see if we can’t make some magic happen,” she says with a knife-edge smile, and she thinks she might be remembering how it feels to be lucky.

* * *

The 13th approaches like any other day, if any other day carried with it a gut-wrenching uncertainty and fear of some nameless thing. Jade spends most of her time in her garden and digs her fingers deep into the damp soil as if she’ll find something there she can grasp.

She has to stop dancing around it, though, because no matter how far she reaches it won’t stop the inexorable flow of day to day to day, until it’s the night before and she’s lying sleepless in bed. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, being unable to fall asleep, and as much as she resents Vriska’s various involvements in her circadian rhythm, she finds herself wishing for a snap of grey fingers so she could just get over it already. She sighs and sits up, reaching into her sylladex for her phone, squinting into the bright display – a little past midnight. Thank god. If it had been 4:13 a.m. she might have actually kicked something.

Her thumb hovers over the Pesterchum icon, then dodges away from it and lands on her camera roll instead. She’s not much for actual photography, never having had much patience for so-called rules of thirds or leading lines, but she likes to snap unprofessional images of the world around her, just for herself. Sometimes she thinks it’s a little silly, taking a photo of a sunset, when it’s the least unique meteorological phenomenon known to man or troll, or of a perfectly ordinary flower in her garden, or the way the light falls in her kitchen some mornings. They’re certainly not going to win any prizes. But it’s not these photos she really takes pride in.

It’s the ones of her friends; candids of Dave and Karkat, being insufferable; sweet things taken from her seat at Rose and Kanaya’s wedding; selfies with various members of her ectofamily and associated in-laws. These little moments that say: people can be happy, even if just for a second, and you can remember that.

Davepeta slinks into Jade’s room while she’s smiling softly at her phone and catches a glimpse of their own face shining out from the screen. Many other times, they’d use this as an opportunity to be cryptic and flirty; tease at Jade’s fond expression until it turns exasperated and she throws a pillow at them. Right now, though, they swoop gently over her shoulders and settle against her body, starting up a quiet purr. Jade turns off her phone and smirks, but lets the submission slide.

They’re so garish, it’s hard to imagine their presence being conducive to sleep in any way. Jade dreams of neon skies and doesn’t stir until morning.

* * *

 

Dave bows low and dramatic, taking Jane's hand and kissing the ring there like she's the head of a crime family and he's late on his security payments on this, the day of her daughter's wedding. She giggles and swats him on the side of the head.

“Your hair!” he comments.

“My hair,” Jane agrees. “You sure know how to charm a gal.”

“It suits you,” Karkat interjects. “You look like an old-timey private eyegouger.”

Jane's hair is short, asymmetrically parted and cleanly gelled down to her head. It casts a spell that makes her tank top hold the same atmosphere as a tailored suit. She gives the two of them a crooked smile.

They’re not the first to arrive – Rose and Kanaya are already situated within the kitchen, the former perched atop a counter while her wife busies herself zesting a lemon, and Jade has clearly been here since the break of dawn, zipping around the low-ceilinged house like a contained hurricane in her barely-suppressed anxiety and excitement. She sees them and lands on the back of the couch with a shaky grin.

“Hi, guys!” she says, a little shrill. “Sorry for forcing you out of bed before noon.”

Rolling his eyes, Dave floats up to give her a hug. “I’m in agony,” he deadpans. “My body yearns to return to the alluring grasp of my sheets, but it will be many years until I see home again.” Jade cuffs him over the ear and waves to Karkat over his shoulder.

“You’re welcome to help in the kitchen,” Jane says meaningfully. “Seeing as one of my chefs is doing nothing but sitting on her keister!” Rose smiles serenely at them across the island. Jane fixes her with a severe look and she obediently slides from the counter and starts juicing one of the lemons Kanaya has finished zesting.

In the living room, Roxy and Calliope are hunched in front of Jane's laptop, hard at work crafting an immaculate party playlist. Dave sees his niche and nudges Karkat towards the kitchen before vaulting over the back of the couch and landing beside Callie with a _whump_.

They let out a little startled shriek. "Oh!" they say, holding a clawed hand to their chest. "Dave, goodness, I didn't even notice you! Roxy and I were given the important task of overseeing music for the event." They grin at him, the expression endearing on their bare green skull.

"No need to fear," he smirks, "the master has arrived."

Having lost his boyfriend to the siren song of showing off his music taste, Karkat rolls his eyes and follows Jane into the kitchen. "What should I be doing?" he asks, rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing his hands.

Jane hums and looks around. The surfaces of the kitchen are covered in various arrays of ingredients and utensils, and eventually she catches upon a bowl of uncracked eggs. "Can you separate these and whisk them? I'm going to make a pavlova," she says, taking the eggs out and laying them on the counter. With one hand and a practiced motion she cracks one, letting the white flow out into the bowl and keeping the yolk perfectly whole and unmarred in the shell. "Like that."

Karkat gulps. "You seem to be putting a lot of faith in my ability to not burst a cluckbeast's unfertilised ovary," he says, but picks up the next egg anyway. His technique is a far cry from Jane's expertise, taking a few tentative strikes at the edge of the counter before the shell breaks, and requiring the use of his hand to catch the yolk as it threatens to spill over into the bowl, but he manages it well enough. Jane grins at him.

"Looks pretty unburst to me!" she says, turning away to mix a bowl of batter. "I need to get you in the kitchen more often, Karkat. You're more careful than Roxy and you don't lick spoons like Callie does." From the living room, Roxy calls out _I love you_! and Jane flips them off.

"Sure," Karkat says disbelievingly. "I'm _exactly_ who you want making your food. If you believe Dave, I'd be putting beetles in everything and knocking shit off the table with my huge ass." He continues to separate the whites, tongue sticking out a little in concentration.

"Oh, nonsense!" Jane laughs. "I'm serious. We don't hang out enough, and this whole to-do of Jade's is reminding me of that." She puts the bowl down, batter smooth and creamy, and reaches for a tin lined with greaseproof paper. "I hear you're quite the expert on media analysis," she says conspiratorially, lowering her eyelids.

At that, Karkat involuntarily glows. "Well, it's not hard," he says, "you know. Relatively. Everyone here is a moron when it comes to understanding _art_ ." A yolk plops into the bowl of whites, but he's able to fish it out without bursting its fragile membrane. "I'm pretty sure Dave has never made it through a single movie without making at _least_ five douchey remarks."

"Well," Jane remarks, arching an understanding eyebrow, "if you'd ever like someone to watch old Earth sitcoms with, I have all of _Frasier_ and no appreciative girlfriends to talk about Niles Crane with." The cake poured, she twists around Rose and Kanaya to slide it into the oven, pulling out a freshly baked pie crust at the same time.

Karkat grins. "You're on."

Seeing that a far more interested party has taken up her slack, Rose slips quietly out of the kitchen with a wink to Kanaya. Her wife rolls her eyes but smiles back at her, shaking her head. _Don't blame me when Jane thrashes you_ , Kanaya mouths, and Rose feigns shock before disappearing to more interesting activities than baking.

She manages to escape at the exact moment that Jake and Dirk arrive, the former loudly and floridly apologising for their lateness – “That dastardly roomba, you know, got the upper hand on us even though she doesn’t _have_ hands!” – and the latter simply giving everyone present a nod. Rose settles herself by his elbow and inclines her head in a return greeting; to them, masters of the nonverbal communication, it’s the same as a greeting hug.

“Where am I needed?” he says, immediately losing Jake to the allure of a _proper_ greeting hug from Jade. “I see you’re off-duty.”

“Don’t tell Jane,” Rose smirks. “Although I wager I wasn’t much help when I was actually in the kitchen, anyway. Help me smother these tables in streamers.”

While they head towards the backyard, where the tables and chairs and picnic blankets are spread in a vague approximation of a party (at the wrong address, clearly, but Jade can fix that), Jake is still spinning his grandmotherdaughter in a great whirling hug.

“By Jove, it’s good to see you!” he says, grinning. “You know, it really brought back memories when that letter zapped right out of thin air in front of my nose. Remember how we used to write to each other?”

Jade smiles back at him. “Of course!” she giggles. “Part of the reason I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, you know? I always loved writing letters. So I thought… why not do it again? We haven’t had any reason to since the game, and it’s something that always made me feel special.” Her smile twists bashful. “You know. Living on an island, and all that.”

Jake nods and is about to reply when Jane’s arm shoots out and grabs him by the wrist. “Jake!” she says brightly. “You wouldn’t have seen a certain Maryam-Lalonde anywhere, would you?” He points meekly into the kitchen, where Kanaya is helping Karkat manhandle an electric beater. Jane shakes her head. “Not that one. _Someone_ promised to help me ice cupcakes and has mysteriously vanished.”

Holding up his hands in surrender, Jake laughs. “I think she’s outside, with Dirk. Setting up. I can take her place, if you like, though?”

Jade chuckles at their easy banter. She knows it’s been awkward at times between them, past feelings rearing their ugly heads to threaten the stability of their friendship, but they’re both at points in their lives where they can touch each other on the elbow without flushing in embarrassment and the mistakes of years ago seem like they’re from another lifetime. It’s so good, that they can move past it, the way both of them hurt each other as stupid teenagers. It makes her hopeful that things won’t stay the same forever.

Jake is carted off to the kitchen and press-ganged into holding a piping bag with clenched fists, and Jade finds herself alone again. _Not alone_ , she firmly tells herself. _Everyone’s here_.

As if by miracle, she’s saved from the thousandth argument of the day with herself about whether or not she deserves to feel lonely as a pink and purple whirl of energy settles by her elbow.

“Come here often?” Jasprose purrs.

And so the morning passes in a blur; people bustling to and fro with dishes and plates and trays, a punch bowl full of some noxious green substance threatening to spill when Karkat stubbornly carries it outside on his own; the playlist grows and grows, each person adding a song or two to it, Dave protesting all the while; Jane inside and outside, barking instructions and recipes to her helpers. Jade finds herself with flour up to her elbows and setting up folding tables and tying balloons together, curling the ribbon with a pair of scissors held open. For the most part, she throws herself into the centre of it all, but as things start to head towards completion, she unconsciously draws back.

She's hovering at the window now, fingers tapping anxiously on the glass, when she feels a presence at her side. Kanaya clears her throat and Jade whips around, as if she was doing something embarrassing, rather than just thinking.

"Kanaya!" she says, nerves spiking her voice high. "I'm, um, does Jane need me for something?"

Kanaya's brows knit together. "We're about to move everything to John's," she says. "When you're ready." She bites her lip, fang pressing a divot into the matte black, and opens her mouth again. "It'll be okay, Jade." Her hand comes to rest on Jade's hip – floating as she is, it's as high as the troll can reach and still make sense as a comforting touch. "I can see how… much this means to you. How much you have riding on this."

Jade tries to smile dismissively, but Kanaya's keen yellow eyes pierce through her. She crumples a little. "I… I keep thinking about… something I was told," she says vaguely. The conversation with Calliope's alternate still feels like something secret, something meant just for her. "That Space… my aspect…" she trails off and Kanaya looks at her meaningfully. " _Our_ aspect. That it's about isolation. And no matter how much I argue with myself about it, I can never push it out of my head." She laughs quietly. "Sorry. This is stupid, I'm not making any sense. I'll go move everything over–"

As she's turning to head to the door, Kanaya's hand shoots for her wrist. "Jade," she says in A Voice. "Wait a moment. Please?" Jade brushes her skirt with her free hand and nods wordlessly, hovering lower to the ground. Kanaya sighs. "I'm not saying that I feel the exact same things you do. But that fear of… isolation, of always being apart – I _do_ know that. Growing up on Alternia, especially in the… relatively unique situation I was in – a jadeblood, condemned to spend my entire adult life cloistered, and with my own struggles beyond that… I found myself thinking many times of escaping from it all so I wouldn't be trapped like that. Stealing a ship, maybe, or simply running far enough into the wilderness that no drone would ever find me. But my lusus always calmed me, told me that I was destined for more than I feared. And sometimes what she said scared me – that I would be the mother of a planet, that I had a fate far bigger than a brooding cavern." She chuckles to herself sadly. "I managed to convince myself that it meant I would be just another kind of jade. Then Prospit, of course, and the meteors, and…"

Her words trail off and her gaze drifts. Jade follows her eyes to the living room, where Rose is sitting next to Dirk and Karkat, half-lidded eyes over a smug smile. The love shining from Kanaya feels strong enough to give Jade radiation poisoning.

"Her," Jade finishes. "You found her."

Kanaya shakes her head with a smile. "Not just her. Everyone. My friends I played the game with, and these strange aliens we contacted, and all of those ghosts, and everyone else we met… I'm not alone. I never was." She reaches up to brush a strand of Jade's hair out of her face. "And neither are you, Jade. _You_ did this. You made the decision to reach out to everyone. So whatever someone says about Space being loneliness, just remember that I'm out here too."

Jade's heart swells and she ducks down to hug Kanaya. "Thank you," she says. "I – you're so good with words, Kanaya, _damn_!" She laughs and pulls back. "I'm fine, I think. Let's go have a party." And if she's lying just a little, it's not as much as she was just a moment ago.

* * *

A hop, skip, and a jump later, a party flashes into existence on John’s front lawn. They’d set it up immaculately outside of Jane and Roxy and Callie’s house, Jade ensuring it occupied the right space there so she could transport it all over in one go with no disasters. She’d offered to zap everyone over at the same time, but everyone had elected to fly (or be flown, in the case of the landbound few) to give her time to talk to John, so she’s here on her lonesome, a ghost town of a celebration at her feet.

Looking at the house in front of her brings something of a sad smile to Jade’s face, the way it’s identical to his old house on the old Earth: of everyone, he’d been the only person to meticulously recreate where he used to live. Everyone else had been too thrilled to put down roots in a new world that they forgot about any concepts of nostalgia for four walls. It’s very _John_ of him, though, the way he never imagined much more than a suburban lifestyle for him, despite everything he did. Bittersweet.

Lost in thought (as she would claim and claim, not procrastinating, just lost), she stands there for several long minutes, until a shuffle of feet sounds behind her. She turns around to see everyone standing there, in front of the tables laden with food and balloons, looking expectant. Rose raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to go get the birthday boy, or will we just wait for him to waltz on out here on his own?” she says, tone not as sardonic as it could be.

“Oh!” Jade barks, as if it had simply slipped her mind. “Right.”

It hadn’t, of course. She’d been stalling, pushing for time as if she isn’t well beyond the point of no return. The quiet house seems haunted. Like if she goes in, she’ll find something horrible. Still, she forces herself to put foot before foot, walking, rather than flying, towards the front door.

She knocks. “Hellooo?” she calls. “John?”

No answer.

Jade shuts her eyes tight and opens the door. It’s unlocked; the fact that a god lives here is enough to deter most unwelcome visitors, and even if someone did dare to break and enter, it’s not like they’d find much of value except a sleeping boy.

In she goes. She shuts the door behind her with a soft _click_ and crosses the living room towards the stairs. The TV is on, playing commercials for some troll miracle cleaning product that Jade’s seen before, but nobody is sitting on the couch to bear witness to its amazing feats. She picks up the remote and switches it off, leaving a stony silence, and heads upstairs with a buzzing in her head.

His bedroom door is ajar. That starts her sweating, for some reason, like she’s in a horror movie and about to head right for the killer, even though she _knows_ this is just John’s house and she _knows_ there’s nobody with a knife and a mask beyond that threshhold and the only thing in here worth being scared of is her own scared self. She takes a shaky breath before setting her hand flat on the wood and pushing it open the rest of the way, and –

There he is. Sleeping. Breathing. Safe. _Alive_.

Jade almost wants to cry, out of grief or relief or sheer force of emotion, but she sniffs it back and calls his name softly. “John?”

He stirs with a snort, rolling over. He’d been asleep in his god tier pajamas, on top of the sheets; one of his pant legs is pushed up above the knee from how he’d been lying. His glasses sit askew on his face.

“Jade?”

Oh, here come the tears. The sound of her brother’s voice, like tripping a circuit, sends her emotions into overdrive and she starts sobbing right there, standing between one of his unwashed shirts and a pile of DVDs he’s left on the floor. John twists out of bed so fast he sends a small tornado through the room, blowing Jade’s hair around her face and sending laundry over every nearby surface, and John jitters to a stop right in front of her, holding her hands where she’s clenched them by her sides. “Hey, hey, Jade,” he says, softly, “what’s wrong? What _happened_?”

“It’s – it’s–” she sobs, struggling to choke the words out. “It’s your – _birthday_!” The sentence is punctuated by her suddenly rushing forward and throwing her arms around his neck; there’s no anger in her tears like there was with Dave, but there’s sadness, and fear, and that deep deep loneliness that she carries like a parasite.

John is bewildered. “It is?” he asks, genuinely. “I… huh.” His hands come to rest on his sister’s back, gently stroking. “I had no idea. I’ve been… sleeping a lot, lately.” He frowns, still blinking tiredness from his eyes. “Is that what’s wrong? That I almost… missed my birthday?”

That he can’t see the truth – that she was so so scared, so terrified, that he wouldn’t just miss his birthday but miss everything, miss all of them, miss _her_ – bites at Jade’s throat. She sucks in a great gasping breath and shakes her head. “No!” she cries. “You… John, I…” She finds she can’t put it into words without it sounding insipid. _I was worried_ : so shallow, so insignificant, when she couldn’t even send him a message without being consumed by anxiety; _I thought you were in trouble_ : he doesn’t leave his house and he’s functionally immortal; _you’re my brother_ : statement of fact.

“I miss you,” she settles on, hiccups quieting from her voice. “I miss you, John. We all miss you so much, and you – you – you know we love you, right?” She pulls back, enough to look at him in the eyes, lip trembling. His own eyes are full of confusion and have bags under them, dark like stormclouds.

“I…” John blinks and bites his lip. “I know,” he says, but something in it doesn’t sound convinced, especially to someone who’s said things in the exact same tone of voice her whole life. “I dunno. It just seems like everyone else is off doing amazing stuff, and all I feel like doing is… being here. Like I used up my life doing things in the game and now all I want to do is sleep.” He shrugs. “It’s fine. We can hang out, if you want, since you’re here. Do you want to watch a movie?”

Jade shakes her head roughly and sniffs. “Can you just… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” She shuts her eyes tightly. “Can you just remember that I love you, at least? And that I’m here. Please?” Her voice goes sweet and soft at the end, like she’s a kid again, asking him to play a game with her.

The meaning of it all seems to hit him, finally, and he looks down and to the side. “I’m not _depressed_ , Jade,” he says, but there’s no strength in it. “I don’t – I’ll remember that,” he finishes, quietly, and leans back in to hug her. This time, there’s no tears, just steady breathing and the knowledge that they’re both there, both really there, and something has started to come down in the walls between them. It’s a start.

After a long minute, Jade pulls back with a careful smile. “Okay,” she says, breaking the somber spell she cast a moment ago. “It _is_ your birthday, though. So… can you come outside with me?”

John squints. “Sounds suspicious. Almost like… a _prank_.”

“What!” Jade says, affronted. “I would _never_. Scout’s honour.” She holds up her hand in what she assumes is the Boy Scout salute, given that she never was one and only has tangential knowledge of what it is, and then extends the hand out for John to take. “Trust me.”

With a roll of his eyes and a tired smile, John does, and they turn to the door of the room. John seems to notice for the first time how messy it is, cringing. “I’ll… clean this up later. I should probably put on some laundry, too… I keep forgetting that not all of my clothes are magic self-cleaning pajamas.” He picks up a threadbare shirt from his computer and tosses it onto his bed, and, the action apparently satisfying his conscience for the moment, nods and exits the room, shutting the door behind him and Jade.

He either doesn’t notice or chooses not to mention the fact that she’d turned off the TV; Jade briefly wonders if he even knew it was still on – and then they’re at the door, and she remembers what’s _actually_ out there. She quickly overtakes him and stands with her back to the door. “Shut your eyes,” she says. “Just for a second.”

“Uh-huh?” John says. “And when I open them, will I be covered in slime that just so happened to be in a bucket balanced on…” He realises the door is closed, rendering the possibility of that particular prank nil, and shuts his mouth with a click. “Fine. But if you’re going to start a prank war with me, you _will_ regret it!”

“Sure, sure,” Jade laughs, and makes sure he’s got his eyes shut tight before opening the door quietly. Everyone is still lined up where she’d left them – except for a streak of orange and blue and red that cuts through the air and lands with a shout of “ _JOHN_!” on the front lawn. The sudden yell from the interloper startles John into opening his eyes.

Before him is…

“Shit – SURPRISE!” Karkat yells, everyone else having been thrown off their rhythm by the shock appearance of Vriska (a documented effect of hers). The rest of the crowd chimes in belatedly, at different volumes, a cacophony of badly-executed cheers, but the general meaning comes across.

“I – uh – what?” John says, eloquent as he ever is. “Terezi? _Vriska_ ? What is… huh?” He apparently can’t seem to process the scene before him: all of his friends, his family, lined up before him in front of tables spread with food and decorated to within an inch of their lives, holding out their hands and looking at him so welcomingly it’s like he’s been away for a year, including two people who actually _have_ been away for _longer_ than that. “Is this for _me_?”

“Yes, _idiot_ ,” says Terezi, who has pried herself from Vriska, where she seemed so be firmly situated for most of the journey here. “She did it. For you, your stupid wiggling day. And everyone came.” She gestures widely out at the array of trolls and humans and then at herself and Vriska. “She even managed to get _us_ here. So shut that sorry human mouth and get out here!”

John almost looks like he’s going to back into the house and shut the door, but finally a relieved sort of smile breaks over his face and he rises into the air with a soft _whoosh_ of warm breeze, and he floats towards his friends with his feet off the ground.

* * *

Jade takes a moment to breathe. All afternoon she’s been drifting from table to table, group to group, indulging in conversation here and there, but for now she steps back and thinks for a moment about what she’s managed to do.

She looks around and sees Dirk, hackles still instinctively up around this crowd, sitting with Rose and Kanaya, the former with her hand gently on the latter's waist, a physical reminding weight, the three of them embroiled in conversation and sipping soda or champagne, Jake and Karkat, neither one of them in the fray but happy enough to be here, Karkat's mouth pinned in a crooked smile as Jake spouts a _Gadzooks!_ and other such English-isms, Dave and Jane and Calliope on the grass nearby, lying on their stomachs and laughing in a way that Dave never would have let himself do, in a way that Calliope would have never dreamt they could, in a way Jane is finally comfortable with, finally amongst friends and with no more lies to tell herself, Vriska and Terezi, making a nuisance of themselves and dancing, stepping on toes and fingers and being in love loudly, the only way they want to be, and Roxy leaning against a table next to John and sipping a glass of punch, fingers relaxed and shoulders loose, gently touching their ring, content to listen to John's critique of Earth C drama films, and John, godhood light on the ever-present breeze, smile still a little weary but relieved, here, and alive, and okay, and it's her brother and she hasn't lost him, and she lets herself feel like a hero for this, and she closes her eyes and lets her awareness of space range out, her knowledge of all physical matter reaching like her brother's breeze, and she knows Aradia and Sollux are about to arrive, eager to see old friends and new, though one of the duo perhaps more enthusiastic than the other, trailing rust red down from the atmosphere, and there's cities, trolls and humans and carapacians and consorts all living their lives, working and talking and playing and reading and driving and laughing and crying and loving, and all throughout the planet is life, growing all the time, dying and being born again, all matter renewing, changing, and out from the earth, this old and new earth, the sun, stars, planets, solar systems, asteroids, cosmic dust and galaxies and all the arteries and atoms of Bilious Slick, their whole universe living and being lived in, and she knows all of it and she doesn't have to be separate from it because it's all a part of her and she is at the centre of the universe, and all the loneliness in her heart can't compete with that. Nothing can.

“You lost in space, Jade?” John calls from the table, and Jade opens her eyes.

“No,” she replies. “I'm good. Do you want to go flying?”

John grins, the family buck teeth making a star appearance. “Where do you wanna go?”

Jade takes a deep breath, lets the air fill her lungs and coil through her body, and lets it out with a smile. “Let's see what else there is to see.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you once again so so much for reading! sorry i don't post much in the way of fanfiction anymore - life gets busy and my attention moves too quickly from fandom to fandom most of the time to see anything through to completion, but i'm glad i finished this. it was a lot of work, but seeing the finished product, along with the art my wonderful artists provided, is well worth it. i hope you enjoyed, and once again, check out the spectacular artists who lent their talents to this work!
> 
> [grasshope](http://grasshope.tumblr.com)   
>  [dystrack](http://dystrack.tumblr.com)   
>  [purpletyrant](http://purpletyrant.tumblr.com)


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